How “avoiding” your life is making you fatter ?

Let’s face it. Human beings avoid.
We avoid our lives and ourselves by fixating on food, tv, gossip, or turning to drugs, alcohol, fantasy, excuses, workaholism, and even relationship addiction.
One of our biggest life defense mechanism is avoidance. And it is a nasty beast.
Letting things pile up. Ignoring what you need to do. Being too tired to deal with how you feel. Resigned to deal with long time pending work issues. Watching more television than usual. Watching your weight climb up slowly & steadily and turning your back on you. Fighting off an illness your loved one has. Feeling unable to deal with things as they come up. That’s all ok. That happens. It is life. But know that it’s the “avoidance game” that you are playing.

There is nothing wrong with having pleasures in your life. And of course, you know there is nothing wrong with food. But when we are avoiding our lives, those perfectly fine activities and vices turn into a shield, a crutch, and a drug.

One of the biggest assets you can have in your recovery with food, is a willingness to stop avoiding. A willingness to face yourself, right where you are, without nasty judgment.
Stop avoiding how you feel, stop avoiding what you want, stop avoiding your own power in your life, stop avoiding everything.
And please: stop judging yourself and turning it into a vicious cycle.
I know it sounds simplistic, but it is true. Once you stop avoiding the scarier things in your life, you will develop a sort of resilience, a willingness to be alive. A comfortability with discomfort. A fearlessness with the fear you cannot avoid.
The things we are scared of aren’t actually as horrible as we make them out to be while we are avoiding them.
What does this have to do with eating? EVERYTHING.

If you are willing to begin, very simply, by dealing with things as they are now. That includes your body, but everything else also, your healing will be real, profound, and lasting.
Your eating isn’t happening in a vacuum. It is a symptom of the way we are going through life. It is the fallout of a fearful relationship with life.
Your emotions feel impossible to live with, so you stuff them away and distract yourself, but they are not impossible.
I have become great at dealing with things as they come up as compared to before but I still have a long way to go & that is what I teach to all my clients. Rolling with the punches and expanding my capacity to feel and my willingness to deal. I like to ask myself “what am I avoiding now?”, and then I go DEAL with that thing.
This is life. Up and down. Fluctuating. The only thing I can do, and we can do, is realize and accept that it is temporary. I am going to clean my room. And then I am going to throw out the broccoli soup I made that doesn’t taste good & has been sitting in my fridge since three days.
Now over to you. What are you avoiding in life? Or another way to ask the same question is what is that one issue or a couple of them that you are resisting & distracting yourself to deal with them later? Time to roll up your sleeves & face it right now! Share your thoughts & insights about this in the comments below. Would love to hear from you.
Love
Anu

I’m here to help you get rid of your struggles with weight & body image and show you how you can live your life to the fullest! I help smart, savvy & successful women (just like you) who are ready to quit dieting, learn the permanent solution to lose weight & create a body they love for life.